Lionel: Kennedy Suicide

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NEW YORK - Suicide is the most unnatural thing a member of any species can do. That’s a fact that’s hard-wired into the cosmic rule book. And there’s been a lot of suicide lately among the supposed highest member of the food chain especially involving kids who are distraught, bullied and I believe it will be proven were also overly and criminally medicated, but that’s for another discussion.

And when you consider the fact that Mary Richardson Kennedy’s children, the youngest who’s only 11, have to deal with the fact that their beloved mother, who was sick and distraught and whose problems were plastered all over the news, that their mother hanged herself at their home. Children who are part of the first family of tragedy, a family who have a curse named after them, what must they be thinking? How must they be reacting to this surreal news? Their home will always be haunted because mothers don’t and aren’t supposed to commit suicide there in their home, where they’re supposed to be safe from the world.

Imagine growing up in that family, a family whose size I still don’t think is actually known precisely. And these children have to grow up with this. What does bobby junior, the father now say to his kids growing up? Son I want you to understand something. Your grandfather, Bobby Kennedy, was assassinated in front of the world less than five years after his brother, your great uncle was assassinated in front of the world. Our family has been filled with tragedy but unlike other families our horrors get their own Wikipedia entry.

Now, stop right there. Imagine you’re a kid with a child’s emotional prism and perspective and wide-eyed innocence and your innocence is rocked and shocked almost immediately. And now this. I know this woman was sick and suffered under the rigors of mental illness and substance abuse and addiction and I’m not sure how responsible these people are for what they do, but I don’t care who you are, what your last name is, but this is the most selfish and horrible and unconscionable thing you can do to your children. To a child. Whose world just blew up with a vicious, cold, heartless vulture media ready to pick the family clean again and with Ted Baxter sockpuppet media rubes trying to break Vegas odds for how many times they can work the term Kennedy curse into yet another pathetic package with a straight face.

And this is the least of any concern, but that home is now haunted. The plush manse will be known as the place where Kennedy’s wife hanged herself. That will be its provenance, and will even affect resell prices. Because suicide and hanging are grisly and macabre. It’s part of our culture.

So listen, turn the Kennedy power and money towards these children, especially the youngest. The feelings that will engulf them, grief, regret, guilt, horror, they’re incomprehensible and incalculable. And I’ve got to say this again, how incredibly selfish this manifestation of insanity was.